CARLOS Tiger without Time

When Saul Escobar was punished for daring to speak his mother tongue inside a Ucayali school, it never occurred to him that one day he would be a professor in a university and would teach in Shipibo, the very language that had so exasperated the mestizo director of his school.

Saul remembers that with a smile, the same smile that he flashed two decades ago when Gerardo Zerdin, then the parish priest in Atalaya, decided to support him so that he could receive a university education in Lima. “I want to study, but I don’t have money,” Saul had told him. Saul has come a long way since then; not only is he a professor at the Universidad Nopoki, but he is about to get his masters degree.

‘I have come’
Even though the idea had been bouncing around his head since the 1990s, it was only in 2005 that Zerdin, the bishop of San Ramón, with jurisdiction covering all of Peru’s central jungle, put his plan into motion. He approached the Monsignor Lino Panitza, the bishop of Carabayllo and founder of the Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae (UCSS), and asked him to help achieve his dream of creating an educational center for the indigenous population in Atalaya.

Having lived with various ethnic groups in the Amazon, and especially with the Shipibo, Zerdin observed that the education in the classroom left a lot to be desired, as the teachers came from other parts of Peru, did not integrate into the communities, did not teach in the local languages and disappeared for long periods of time. So, he thought, the best thing would be if the locals themselves received an education, to later impart it to their communities. Lino Panitza, who shared the idea of providing opportunities for marginalized young people, was receptive, and that same year, an agreement was signed between the vicarship of San Román and the UCSS to create Nopoki (‘I have come’ in Asháninka).

“I don’t have words to express the greatness of Nopoki”
In 2012, four students belonging to the Yine culture graduated from Nopoki with bachelor’s degrees. It was hard work for Remigio Zapata, in charge of Yine grammar and tasked with reviewing all of the daily lessons that the students received in that language. “The course that was hardest for me was math, in part because of the insufficient prior education, but also because words like tangent, parallel and vertical are untranslatable into Yine,” he says.

Juan López, also a professor at Nopoki, had to live up to his Yánesha name, Oth, which means “the strongest, the most powerful,” in order to overcome all of the challenges that life has presented him. When he was an important Yánesha leader, he was kidnapped for fifteen days by Shining Path; he studied at the La Cantuta University until Fujimori closed it and he had to flee to Pucallpa to continue his studies; later, he was elected mayor of the district of Palcazú, and when he refused a bribe from narcotraffickers, they put a price on his head. He had to leave Peru, assisted by German NGOs. In 2004, he returned to his community in the central jungle to work as a primary school teacher. Now, in Nopoki, he feels fulfilled. “Here, the students have food, a bed, sanitary facilities, clothes, healthcare, and that’s priceless. Education is the key to development, and the graduates of Nopoki have a complete education; they aren’t just teachers, but rather can create electrical, water and sewage systems. I don’t have words to express the greatness of Nopoki. If I’d had this opportunity, I would be an ambassador or a cabinet minister,” says Juan.

In 2006, Nopoki started as a pre-university center. The communities were very enthusiastic about the project. Roughly sixty students arrived and prepared themselves while UCSS was creating a bilingual, bicultural program. In 2007, there was an entrance exam, and the spectrum of participating indigenous nations expanded significantly. By then, professors from UCSS were already teaching, but they did not have the campus they now occupy. All of the activities were carried out in the Atalaya parish house. The rooms held up to 20 students on cots.

In 2008, they received 30 hectares for the campus. The students cleared the land themselves and later helped to build the university. In 2010, they moved to the campus. In 2011, the first class of 26 students graduated with bachelors degrees. In December of 2012, 33 young indigenous students graduated, and they are now at the UCSS campus in Lima to receive their licenses.

Today, the administration of Nopoki is shared. The payroll is the responsibility of UCSS, and the expenses for housing the students and construction are billed to the vicarship. Help from international NGOs and private donations have been important in making the project a reality.

‘He awoke our hearts’
Jovita Vasqúez, a 33-year-old Shipibo-Conibo from the first graduating class, is already a councilwoman in the Atalaya provincial government. She had always wanted to make something of herself, but it was impossible for her to finish her studies in Pucallpa due to a lack of funds. In her community, located in the district of Tahuanía, they spoke of Monsignor Zerdin as a legendary figure who helped the Shipibo. She let him know that she was interested in studying. That’s how she was considered for inclusion in Nopoki. “I learned to value my culture. The monsignor awoke our hearts and fed our self-esteem,” says a grateful Jovita.

Diógenes Campos, a 23-year-old Asháninka, is in the second entering class and lives in the indigenous community Aerija. From 2008 to 2010, he lived at Nopoki, but that he has a wife and son, he lives in his community and walks an hour each way to the university. In the future, he wants to work as a teacher in his community and to promote the development of agriculture, tourism, handicraft production and health. Unlike earlier generations, Diógenes believes in family planning and only wants to have two children. That is just one of the cultural changes he wants to inspire among his compatriots.

A simple act of justice
The vice rector of UCSS, Dr. Gianbatista Bolis, was surprised by the ability of the indigenous students to pick apart the poems of Rilke, Pavese and Leopardi and associate them with their own experiences. This reinforces an important theory in intercultural anthropology, posited by Alain Touraine, which holds that all languages are dialects of one fundamental language, which is the language of the heart of man.

What’s certain is that a project like Nopoki could not be carried out without the belief that all human beings have the same potential and greatness. There are people with few opportunities, not fewer capacities. Giving them the tools to chart their own destiny is a simple act of justice.

The natives graduated in the municipal coliseum of Atalaya, under the rain but illuminated by knowledge. Soon, they would leave to study for their licenses in Lima. As if by ritual, they would water, and take their photos next to, an aguaje palm tree that the first class had planted on the UCSS campus in Los Olivos. The palm tree has grown, and so have they.

* Álvaro Rocha for Somos,Translated and adapted by Nick Rosen (January 23, 2013)

With half as many neurons in their cerebral cortex as cats—and half the attitude, some would say—dogs are often taken to be the less intelligent domestic partner. While dogs drink out of the toilet, slavishly follow their master and need a chaperone to relieve themselves, cats hunt self-sufficiently and survey their empire with a regal gaze.

Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” pups take a romp in The Wall Street Journal studios. (And leave us a special, uh, surprise). Watch them Super Bowl Sunday at 3 p.m. EST just before kickoff. 

While it may seem intuitive that most doggies know how to paddle, some need a little instruction. WSJ’s Geoffrey Fowler attends a canine swimming class. Even the dog’s closest relative, the wolf, beat its cousin when food was placed on the opposite side of a fence, as shown in a 1982 study by Harry and Martha Frank of the University of Michigan.

In 2001, Peter Pongrácz and colleagues from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary published a study with an important qualification to this earlier finding: When the experimenters showed dogs a human rounding the fence first, the dogs could solve the problem immediately.This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It’s when dogs join forces with us that they become special.Nowhere is this clearer than when dogs are reading our gestures. Every dog owner has helped her dog find a lost ball or treat by pointing in the right direction. No other animal—not even our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees—can interpret our gestures as flexibly as dogs.

So are dogs smarter than cats? In a sense, but only if we cling to a linear scale of intelligence that places sea sponges at the bottom and humans at the top. Species are designed by nature to be good at different things.And what might the genius of cats be? Possibly, that they just can’t be bothered playing our silly games or giving us the satisfaction of discovering the extent of their intelligence.

* By Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

—Dr. Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Ms. Woods is a research scientist at Duke University. This essay is adapted from their new book, “The Genius of Dogs,” published by Dutton.

A version of this article appeared February 1, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Dogs.

Young graduates are in debt, out of work and on their parents’ couches. People in their 30s and 40s can’t afford to buy homes or have children. Retirees are earning near-zero interest on their savings.

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security— have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies — including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend — to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.

Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.

The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.

Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions.

Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.

“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.

“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.

When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.

“I just say to myself: ‘Why me? What have I done to deserve this?’ ” said John Agati, 56, of Norwalk, Conn., whose last full-time job, as a merchandise buyer and product developer, ended four years ago when his employer went out of business.

That position paid $90,000, and his résumé lists stints at companies like American Express, Disney and USA Networks. Since being laid off, though, he has worked a series of part-time, low-wage, temporary positions, including selling shoes at Lord & Taylor and making sales calls for a limo company.

The last few years have taken a toll not only on his family’s finances, but also on his feelings of self-worth.

“You just get sad,” Mr. Agati said. “I see people getting up in the morning, going out to their careers and going home. I just wish I was doing that. Some people don’t like their jobs, or they have problems with their jobs, but at least they’re working. I just wish I was in their shoes.”

He said he cannot afford to go back to school, as many younger people without jobs have done. Even if he could afford it, economists say it is unclear whether older workers like him benefit much from more education.

“It just doesn’t make sense to offer retraining for people 55 and older,” said Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “Discrimination by age, long-term unemployment, the fact that they’re now at the end of the hiring queue, the lack of time horizon just does not make it sensible to invest in them.”

Many displaced older workers are taking this message to heart and leaving the labor force entirely.

The share of older people applying for Social Security early spiked during the recession as people sought whatever income they could find. The penalty they will pay is permanent, as retirees who take benefits at age 62 — as Ms. Zimmerman did, to help make her mortgage payments — will receive 30 percent less in each month’s check for the rest of their lives than they would if they had waited until full retirement age (66 for those born after 1942).

Those not yet eligible for Social Security are increasingly applying for another, comparable kind of income support that often goes to people who expect never to work again: disability benefits. More than one in eight people in their late 50s is now on some form of federal disability insurance program, according to Mark Duggan, chairman of the department of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The very oldest Americans, of course, were battered by some of the same ill winds that tormented those now nearing retirement, but at least the most senior were cushioned by a more readily available social safety net. More important, in a statistical twist, they may have actually benefited from the financial crisis in the most fundamental way: prolonged lives.

Death rates for people over 65 have historically fallen during recessions, according to a November 2011 study by economists at the University of California, Davis. Why? The researchers argue that weak job markets push more workers into accepting relatively undesirable work at nursing homes, leading to better care for residents.

Harvard has forced dozens of students to leave in its largest cheating scandal in memory, the university made clear in summing up the affair on Friday, but it would not address assertions that the blame rested partly with a professor and his teaching assistants.

Harvard would not say how many students had been disciplined for cheating on a take-home final exam given last May in a government class, but the university’s statements indicated that the number forced out was around 70. The class had 279 students, and Harvard administrators said last summer that “nearly half” were suspected of cheating and would have their cases reviewed by the Administrative Board. On Friday, a Harvard dean, Michael D. Smith, wrote in a letter to faculty members and students that, of those cases, “somewhat more than half” had resulted in a student’s being required to withdraw.

Dr. Smith, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote, “Of the remaining cases, roughly half the students received disciplinary probation, while the balance ended in no disciplinary action.” He wrote that the last of the cases was concluded in December; no explanation was offered for the delay in making a statement. The forced withdrawals were retroactive to the start of the school year, he wrote, and those students’ tuition payments would be refunded.

The Administrative Board’s Web site says that forced withdrawals usually last two to four semesters, after which a student may return.

Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who has spent much of his career studying cheating, said that eventually, the university should “give a much more complete account of exactly what happened and why it happened.”

The episode has given a black eye to one of the world’s great educational institutions, where in an average year, 17 students are forced out for academic dishonesty. It was a heavy blow to sports programs, because the class drew a large number of varsity athletes, some of them on the basketball team. Two players accused of cheating withdrew in September rather than risk losing a year of athletic eligibility on a season that disciplinary action could cut short.

People briefed on the investigations say that they went on longer than expected because the university’s effort was painstaking, hiring additional staff members to comb through each student’s exam and even color-coding specific words that appeared in multiple papers.

One implicated student, who argued that similarities between his paper and others could be traced to shared lecture notes, said the Administrative Board demanded that he produce the notes six months later. The student, who asked not to be identified because he still must deal with Harvard administrators, said he found some notes and was not forced to withdraw.

Some Harvard professors and alumni, along with many students, have protested that the university was too slow in resolving the cases, too vague about its ethical standards or too tough on the accused.

Robert Peabody, a lawyer representing two implicated students, said as their cases dragged on, with frequent postponement, “they emotionally deteriorated over the course of the semester.” He said one was forced to leave the university, and the other was placed on academic probation.

While Harvard has not identified the course or the professor involved, they were quickly identified by the implicated students as Introduction to Congress and Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor of government. Dr. Platt did not respond to messages seeking comment Friday.

In previous years, students called it an easy class with optional attendance and frequent collaboration. But students who took it last spring said that it had suddenly become quite difficult, with tests that were hard to comprehend, so they sought help from the graduate students who ran the class discussion groups and graded assignments. Those teaching fellows, they said, readily advised them on interpreting exam questions.

Administrators said that on final-exam questions, some students supplied identical answers, down to, in some cases, typographical errors, indicating that they had written them together or plagiarized them. But some students claimed that the similarities in their answers were due to sharing notes or sitting in on sessions with the same teaching fellows. The instructions on the take-home exam explicitly prohibited collaboration, but many students said they did not think that included talking with teaching fellows.

Dr. Smith’s long note did not say how the Administrative Board viewed such distinctions, or whether the university had investigated the conduct of the professor and teaching fellows, and a spokesman said Harvard would not elaborate on those questions.

*  RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, February 1, 2013

It was Christmas night when Sincere Smith, 2, found his father’s loaded gun on the living room table of their Conway, S.C., mobile home. It took just a second for Smith’s tiny hands to find the trigger and pull. A single bullet ripped into his upper right chest and out his back.

His father, Rondell Smith, said he had turned away to call Sincere’s mother, who had left to visit a friend. His back was turned to the toddler, he said, for just that moment.

Sincere was still conscious when his father scooped him up and rushed him to the hospital, just a few minutes away.

Eleven hours earlier, Sincere Smith had woken up to Christmas — the first that he was old enough to appreciate. His father remembered their last morning well -– his son ripping through wrapping paper, squealing with delight with each new gift — his first bike, a bright toy barn.

It was quite a sight seeing Sincere so happy around a cloud of crinkled wrapping paper. “We bought him a little barn thing,” Smith said. “He knew what a barn is. He just seen it -– ‘Oh Mommy, Daddy! Barn!’ He went crazy over it. … He lit up like a Christmas tree.”

Smith, 30, lit up too. “I just wanted to see him open them up,” he said. His own parents were teenagers when they had him. He had vowed to be there for his five children, giving up college and a possible basketball career to take care of them. With Sincere, he promised his wife he’d be a hands-on parent. He said he considered Sincere his best friend.

The two kept close that day visiting relatives for more presents and a Christmas dinner of chicken and macaroni and cheese. “Everything was normal,” Smith said. “He was happy. Everything was good then.”

Two weeks earlier, Smith had bought a .38-caliber handgun to protect his family after bandits had tried to break into their home. He doesn’t know what to say about the national gun-control debate. He just wants that lost second back. “I would say, man, keep them out of your house,” he offered. “It’s just. Boy. All it takes is a second. Just a second to turn your head. I don’t know, sir.”

Sincere died on an ambulance gurney as he was transferred to a second hospital in Charleston.

He never got to ride his new blue Spiderman bike outside. It sits in the trunk of his grandmother Sheila Gaskin’s car. “He didn’t get to ride his bike,” she explained. “It was cold [on Christmas]. My daughter doesn’t want to take it back to the store.”

Gaskin lives across the street from her daughter and Smith. She saw Sincere every day of his life. “He hear me coming down the road, my gospel music blasting and he hollering ‘Nana!'” she recalled. Now, she said she visits his grave every day. She hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since the accident. “It’s just killing me,” she said.

After Sincere was shot, Rondell Smith thought about taking his own life, Gaskin said. “It’s just not good,” she said. “It’s not good at all. He just has to stay prayed up. … That’s all he can do is give it to God.”

Smith wasn’t at Sincere’s side when he died in the ambulance. He was being interrogated by the police, who eventually charged him with involuntary manslaughter. His next court date is Feb. 8.

As he was rushing Sincere to the hospital, Smith said he told his son that he loved him. “He couldn’t really talk,” Smith said. “Last thing I heard him say was, ‘Daddy.’ He kept trying to say ‘Daddy.’ Believe me I hear it every day.”

There were 29 other shooting deaths across the U.S. on Christmas. A soldier was shot and killed in his barracks in Alaska. A man was murdered in the parking lot of Eddie’s Bar and Grill in Orrville, Ala. A 23-year-old was shot at a party in Phoenix. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department employee was killed in a drive-by.

A 20-year-old Louisville, Ky., man was shot and killed after walking his sister home. On Christmas Eve, he had posted an R.I.P. on his Facebook page for a friend and former classmate, who had been gunned down that day.

A 10-year-old in Memphis, Tenn., Alfreddie Gipson, was accidentally shot to death by gun purchased by an older brother, who had gotten the weapon after being bullied at school. Gipson was jumping on a bed when the gun slipped out of a mattress. It discharged when his 12-year-old brother tried to put it back, their mother said at a vigil.

There were at least 41 homicides or accidental gun deaths on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day, at least 54 people died from bullet wounds.

Through Google and Nexis searches, The Huffington Post has tracked gun-related homicides and accidents throughout the U.S. since the schoolhouse massacre in Newtown, Conn., on the morning of Dec. 14. There were more than 100 such deaths the first week after the school shooting. In the first seven weeks after Newtown, there have been more than 1,280 gunshot homicides and accidental deaths. Slate has counted 1,475 fatal shooting incidents since Newtown, including suicides and police-involved shooting deaths, which The Huffington Post did not include in its tally.

A 17-year-old took his last breath in the backyard of an abandoned house in New Orleans. Prince Jones, 19, was found bleeding to death in a 1998 Buick LeSabre in Nashville, Tenn. A woman was slumped over the steering wheel in Houston, the engine still running.

A 52-year-old man was shot and killed at a Checkers parking lot in Atlanta. A 26-year-old man was shot to death in a church parking lot in Jacksonville, Fla. Steven E. Lawson, 28, was shot and killed just outside a church in Flint, Mich., where he was attending a funeral for another gunshot victim.

On a Tuesday morning in Baton Rouge, La., police knocked on Alean Thomas’ door and told her: “You have a young man dead in your driveway.” It was her 19-year-old son. Three days later, a 17-year-old in California was killed visiting family for his birthday.

On a Thursday afternoon in New Orleans’ Sixth Ward, Dementrius Adams was murdered on his way to buy groceries for his mother. He was 28 and had a 5-year-old daughter. “He was a hard-working man,” his sister said told a reporter. “He was so proud of his job. … He was a good brother, a good father — he was a loveable man.”

Adams had just been promoted from a dishwashing job to cook at a New Orleans restaurant.

The dead included grandmothers and a 6 month old. There were police officers and a Texas prosecutor. There was a Bodega worker in Queens, N.Y., and a gas station attendant in East Orange, N.J.

A high school majorette, a college freshman at Auburn University and a man planning to get his GED in Bradenton, Fla., were killed. One victim became Chicago’s 500th murder of 2012. Another was his town’s 40th. One was found frozen and bloody in an alley — Tacoma, Wash.’s first slaying of 2013. The victim, a mother, was planning to move with her daughters to Manhattan.

“I am lost, hollow,” said the mother of the GED aspirant gunned down at a Chevron station on New Year’s Day.

In Newport News, Va., after a shooting broke out, a mother ran outside to protect her two sons, ages 5 and 7. She yelled at one of the gunman and was killed.

A Davidson, N.C., husband murdered his wife, then shot himself . Their 3-year-old daughter was found watching T.V. in another room.

There were murder-suicides in Florida, Kentucky, Oregon, Texas and California. Most were men killing women, husbands killing wives, boyfriends killing girlfriends, sons killing mothers.

There were so many drive-bys.

On Jan. 11, in Baltimore, Devon Shields, 26, was found lying in a street with a fatal gunshot wound to the chest. Three hours later, Delroy Davis was found lying face-up between two houses. Two-and-a-half hours later, Baltimore police rushed to a double-shooting that left one man dead with multiple gunshot wounds. The next day, Sean Rhodes was found “lying face-down in a pool of blood,” according to the Baltimore City Paper. Two others survived gunshot wounds.

Silly arguments became final arguments. A man was murdered over two broken cigarettes. Another after getting into a spat at a taco truck. Travis Len Massey, 23, was shot and killed by his sister’s boyfriend in a family dispute over a missing gun. A 52-year-old Jacksonville man shot and killed a longtime friend over an argument, according to police. When asked what the argument was about, the gunman said he didn’t remember, according to a television report.

A 6-year-old accidentally killed a 4-year-old. A different 4-year-old accidentally killed a 58-year old.

Alexander Xavier Shaw, 18, put a gun to his head to show how safe it was. “Witnesses told officers that Shaw, his uncle, grandparents and some friends were on the back patio talking when he showed them a .38-caliber revolver,” a St. Petersburg, Fla., newspaper account said. The gun accidentally fired, killing Shaw.

* Mark Hanrahan, Melissa Jeltsen, Benjamin Hart, Adam Goldberg, Peter Finocchiaro, Chelsea Kiene and William Wrigley contributed reporting. (Feb.1, 2013)

Turkey’s interior minister, Muammer Guler, said law-enforcement authorities had information the bomber was a member was a Turkish man in his 30s who had been previously jailed on terrorism charges and was a known member of the outlawed leftist group, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C.

In a statement on the website Halkin Sesi, which is affiliated with the group, DKHP-C said the attack was in retaliation for U.S. imperialism and Turkey’s submission to American colonialism. The website, which translates as “People’s Voice,” also posted two photos of the alleged bomber, Ecevit Alisan Sanli. The site called on followers to go to the Black Sea province of Ordu in Turkey’s northeast to attend Mr. Sanli’s funeral.

The DHKP-C, which wants a socialist state and is vehemently anti-American, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. The group has been relatively quiet in recent years, but has used suicide bombers in the past.

The alleged bomber came from Germany via Greek islands, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Mr. Sanli was jailed following his conviction in connection with a terror attack on a military recreational facility in Istanbul in 1997, and was released from prison in 2001, according to the Turkish Interior Ministry.

The attack comes against the backdrop of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, assault on U.S. posts in Benghazi, Libya. In the aftermath of that attack, in which four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed, lawmakers faulted State Department security procedures, while officials there said Congress had cut its security budgets.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the fact that the bomber struck at a perimeter checkpoint showed the post in Turkey had sufficient protection. “The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries,” she said. She said the checkpoint where the blast occurred was “far from the main building.”

Two other guards were “shaken up” in Friday’s attack, the U.S. official said, and a Turkish visitor was in serious condition. Several U.S. and Turkish staff members at the embassy were struck by flying debris and were released after treatment at an embassy clinic.

The Ankara blast occurred on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s last day on the job. John Kerry is taking over as the chief U.S. diplomat, leaving his seat as a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry’s staff was briefed as quickly as State Department officials received information, Ms. Nuland said.

Mrs. Clinton spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and with U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, Ms. Nuland said. She also spoke with senior embassy staffers.

In addition to declaring the blast a terrorist attack, the State Department said the incident illustrates the need for congressional funding for improvements in diplomatic security. Ms. Nuland said that the Ankara post has been steadily upgraded over the past decade, but that it is a 1950s building due to be upgraded.

“Ankara is one of the posts that is due for a completely new embassy compound in the future, and it is one of the posts that will go on the lists if the department gets the money that we are looking from the Congress for security,” she said.

Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House foreign-affairs committee, said the bombing in Turkey is another reminder of the threat against U.S. interests abroad. “Coming after Benghazi, it underscores the need for a comprehensive review of security at our diplomatic posts,” he said. “The committee stands ready to assist the State Department in protecting our diplomats.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who was especially critical of the State Department over the Benghazi attack, said reports on Friday indicated that protective measures in place in Ankara succeeded in limiting deaths and injuries, and showed the importance of physical security standards.

“Unfortunately, it confirms in my mind … that these were the kinds of physical security standards that should have been in place in Benghazi before the September 11, 2012 attack,” she said.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack showed a need for international cooperation against terrorism and was aimed at disturbing Turkey’s “peace and prosperity.”

Yavuz Ozden/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WSJ’s Emre Peker joins the News Hub to discuss an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey by a suicide bomber. Reports list one casualty and two additional people as injured. Photo: AP Images.

Analysts said early evidence suggested the attack bears little resemblance to the Libya assault. “This attack looks amateurish and not very well organized. It seems very different from the Benghazi operation,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat in Istanbul, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Analysts said that militant leftist groups, although marginal, have mobilized against Ankara’s cooperation with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and Washington during the Syria crisis. Some 50 alleged members of the DHKP-C, including nine lawyers who have represented it, were detained in a recent police operation.

Turkish media reported that DHKP-C members in January assaulted German troops they mistook for U.S. soldiers who were accompanying a Patriot-missile battery in southern Turkey set to be deployed along the Syrian border.

“Although such groups represent a marginal political current, they could have an outsized impact. Iranian and Russian media have covered these incidents extensively in order to feed an anti-NATO slant and increase Ankara’s political costs for supporting the Syrian opposition,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute, a think tank. “This narrative could spur further unrest in Turkey, amplifying perceptions of instability.”

The U.S. moved its consulate in Istanbul to a safer location on top of a hill from a busy and cramped downtown district after a 2003 al Qaeda attack on the U.K. consulate a few blocks away. In four bombings during November 2003, the terrorist organization targeted two synagogues, the British consulate and the local headquarters  killing 67 people.

In 2008, three Turkish nationals fired on the policemen outside the U.S. Istanbul consulate, killing three officers. All three assailants were shot dead at the scene. There was speculation that the attackers were al Qaeda members, but local authorities never confirmed that, saying only that they were terrorists.

—Peter Nicholas and Siobhan Gorman in Washington contributed to this article. (Feb.2, 2013)

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called on the Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party” on Thursday as GOP leaders promised fundamental changes to help stave off future losses.

In the keynote address at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, Jindal said the GOP doesn’t need to change its values but “might need to change just about everything else we are doing.”

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults,” he said. “We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”

Jindal, thought to be a potential 2016 presidential contender, offered little detail in the 25-minute address. He called on conservatives to shift their focus from Capitol Hill number crunching to “the place where conservatism thrives — in the real world beyond the Washington Beltway.”

Hours before the speech, Republican leaders promised to release in March a report, dubbed the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” outlining recommendations on party rules and messaging designed to appeal to a rapidly changing American electorate. President Barack Obama’s November victory was fueled, in part, by overwhelming support from the nation’s Hispanic, Asian and African-American communities.

“Losing is not fun. We want to win,” said GOP strategist Sally Bradshaw, who is among five people appointed by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to craft the report.

“I think you’re going to see a very renewed, aggressive effort by this party to put on a different face,” Bradshaw said. “We are going to go into areas that we do not go into and see folks that we do not see.”

Republicans presidential nominee Mitt Romney struggled last fall to win over women and minorities, who overwhelmingly favored President Barack Obama’s re-election bid. GOP officials conceded this week that they must change their tone and message, if not their policies, if they hope to expand their appeal in the coming years.

Romney alienated many Hispanic voters by highlighting his support for a fence along the Mexican border and “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants. Down-ticket Republican candidates alienated female voters by backing new abortion laws in a handful of swing states like Virginia and New Hampshire, while Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri hurt himself and his party by declaring that women’s bodies could prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.”

GOP strategist Ari Fleischer suggested that his party could learn an important lesson from Democrats on messaging: “Republicans talk policy and Democrats talk people. Republicans can learn a little bit from Democrats on how to make those people connections with our policies.”

Asked whether he was considering a presidential bid in 2016, Jindal brushed aside the question. “Any Republican that’s thinking about talking about running for president in 2016 needs to get his head examined,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

He called on conservatives to stop fighting with Democrats on their terms about the size of government in Washington and focus instead on connecting with voters across the nation.

“Today’s conservatism is completely wrapped up in solving the hideous mess that is the federal budget, the burgeoning deficits, the mammoth federal debt, the shortfall in our entitlement programs,” he said. “We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping. This is a rigged game, and it is the wrong game for us to play.”

Jindal’s comments come a day after the House passed a bill to permit the government to borrow enough money to avoid a first-time default for at least four months, defusing a looming crisis setting up a springtime debate over taxes, spending and the deficit. The House passed the measure on a bipartisan basis as majority Republicans back away from their previous demand that any increase in the government’s borrowing cap be paired with an equivalent level of spending cuts.

The Louisiana governor’s blunt remarks follow criticism from another high-profile Republican based outside Washington who publicly blasted GOP leadership on Capitol Hill: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

One of the party’s most popular voices, Christie earlier in the month criticized his party’s “toxic internal politics” after House Republicans initially declined to approve disaster relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy. He said it was “disgusting to watch” their actions and he faulted the GOP’s most powerful elected official, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting Thursday that Republicans also need to develop a sound strategy for confronting the Obama administration, suggesting House Republicans could use hearings to expose waste and promote better ideas.

“A lot of Republicans, frankly, spent the last two years saying, ‘Oh, gee, we don’t have to do much because after Obama loses we’ll work with the new Republican president.’ Well, that world ain’t there,” Gingrich said. “So now they have to make adjustments. They’ve got to understand that this is a different game.”

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.(Jan. 26, 2013)